


negotiation

by belovedmuerto



Series: blood and moonlight [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Relationship Negotiation, Vampire Bucky, healthy relationship, witch steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 11:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17406401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belovedmuerto/pseuds/belovedmuerto
Summary: Prompted by one of Steve's feelings about things to come, Bucky insists upon a discussion.





	negotiation

**Author's Note:**

> This has actually been finished for a few weeks, but I just got around to "editing" it yesterday. I didn't have a beta, so any remaining mistakes are either on purpose or things I just missed. I've got one more short fic in this series that will hopefully be posted next weekend, and then there will be another, longer fic that I haven't started yet but that I've been planning since at least the SBB when 'in this twilight' got posted.

“Wait, what?”

Bucky looks around as his brain comes back online, but Steve is already gone from the kitchen. He blinks a few times, trying to wrap his head around it, trying to consider it as anything other than a _**terrible**_ idea. It doesn’t work. This is a bad idea.

It’s also too late, too close to dawn, for Bucky to be able to do anything about it tonight. He needs to go to bed. With a sigh, he stands up and goes down the hall to their room. Where Steve is.

Where Steve is fidgeting his way out of his clothes, his most stubborn set to his shoulders. His thoughts are a jumble, and he’s avoiding meeting Bucky’s eyes.

Bucky rolls his eyes and just lets himself be exasperated with him, knowing he can feel it. That at least gets Steve to look at him, affronted.

“Am I supposed to do this now?” Bucky asks, crossing his arms.

It seems to catch Steve off guard. He shakes his head, and looks away again.

“No,” he says after a moment. He’s down to his skivvies, fumbling at the side of the bed for the switch to the electric blanket. Still not looking at him. “I gotta go to bed, Buck.”

Yeah, cuz that’s not suspicious.

Bucky does not snort. “I can see you going to bed, Stevie.”

“Gotta get up early tomorrow. Sam an’ me’re gonna do some weaving for the house protections.”

“Okay, Stevie,” Bucky agrees, easy enough. He, as usual, has no intention of getting up before he has to. He needs his beauty rest, to maintain his deathly pallor without just looking like a corpse.

“Are you--?” Steve doesn’t finish the thought.

“Yes,” Bucky answers anyway. He strips off quickly, while Steve crawls under the covers on his side of the bed.

Bucky lays down next to him, and Steve turns and curls up against him, like he always does, even though Bucky does nothing but sap his warmth, until the electric blanket catches up and warms them both.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve mumbles against his chest.

Bucky again does not snort, and honestly, he’s kind of proud of himself for that. But he also knows that a show of any sort of negativity right now will set Steve off and he’ll close himself off and they’ll never get to the bottom of this.

Every fiber of Steve’s being is screaming how he doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t actually want it to happen. 

They’re going to have to talk about it. There will be no biting and certainly no fucking without a lengthy discussion beforehand.

But Bucky can wait. Steve’s way too worked up and upset and pig-headed for them to talk it out now.

Besides, the sun is rising, and their bed is increasingly comfy and cozy, and Bucky can wait.

\----

He wakes up after the sun has gone down, thought not too long after. Bucky usually wakes around sunset, though he also usually doesn’t actually get up immediately. When Steve calls him lazy, he always claims he waits to be sure the sun is gone so he doesn’t, yanno, die. Steve always rolls his eyes at him, it’s turning into a thing. Bucky loves it, though he always complains.

Often, Steve is around to wander in and pick up with teasing him for being lazy, or to crawl back into bed with him. He vaguely remembers Steve saying he had to get up early to help Sam, or something. He remembers that it was with Sam, either way. 

Anyway, the place feels empty, even from Bucky’s spot under the covers, and he lets himself drift for a bit, not quite awake or asleep, missing Steve a little.

He can’t spend the whole of his waking hours in bed though, so eventually he gets out of bed and gets started moving towards being truly “up”. Bucky does have actual stuff to do that evening.

_Why_ Peggy had asked him to scout office space for a base of ops for the pack in New York is beyond him. But she’d given him the addresses of the available spots, and she’d made him appointments with the realtors, undoubtedly because she knows he’d never do it otherwise-- so he’ll go.

Bucky may be the leader of their little group, but that is in name only. Peggy is 100% the alpha of her pack of wolves, and the boss of all of them.

He showers, and gets dressed, and leaves a note for Steve in case he gets back first, and heads out to catch a train into Manhattan for his first of two appointments that night.

\----

The realtor that Peggy had made the appointments with is called Angie, and she’s a firecracker. Bucky likes her immediately. She seems to know that he’s not mortal, though it’s tough to tell sometimes with the folks who are mortal. The mortal world seems to have accepted that creatures like vampires and werewolves exist, but they also seem to mostly pretend not to know, and ignore all the signs, right up to and including, for example, when Bucky is biting them.

(Luckily for Bucky, he doesn’t require so much food as to have to feed too deeply or too often. He hasn’t killed someone who wasn’t actively trying to kill him for decades.)

The office spaces are both nice, but Bucky doesn’t think either of them will work. When he and Angie part ways, she tells him to let Peggy know his thoughts, and she’d call Peggy. She has a mischievous twinkle in her eye, and a spring in her step when she walks off.

Bucky goes his own way, catching a train back to Brooklyn, towards home. 

He stops at Steve’s favorite sushi place on his way, knowing that Steve won’t have thought to eat for most of the evening, especially if he’s spent a lot of time with Sam spell-casting. The protections for the house take a lot out of both of them, but Sam is at least self-aware enough to feed himself after.

Steve sometimes, not so much. 

He can’t tell for sure when he walks up to the house if Steve is still upstairs at Sam’s, or if he’s at home. Considering that home is the basement apartment, it muddles things a little. He can tell, at least, that Steve is somewhere in the house. And for now, that’s enough. 

It turns out Steve is at home. Bucky finds him in the kitchen, surprisingly enough, although he’s staring into the fridge like it holds the universe’s secrets.

He’s still glowing, a little. Bucky smiles, and puts the bag of sushi on the table.

“Stevie, I brought food.”

Steve turns to look at him, a little dazed, a little drunk on magic still. He grins when he sees Bucky, and grins more when he sees the food, falling on it like a starving man. 

Bucky sits across from him, and watches him eat. He waits, biding his time.

By the time Steve has finished his meal, his thoughts are much more calm, soothed by the food, less drunk on magic. He’s still glowing a little bit, and Bucky honestly wants to skip the talk and maybe just snuggle for a while. Make-out a little, maybe fool around.

But they do need to talk.

“Steve,” he says.

Steve looks up at him, and narrows his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it, Buck.”

“Steve,” he says again. The ‘come on’ is inherent.

Steve gets up, and Bucky follows suit. He even goes so far as to use his speed to get in front of Steve, but he doesn’t grab. Doesn’t touch him at all, just stops him from leaving the kitchen.

Steve glares at him, because he hates when Bucky does that. Keeps glaring as he steps forward and pushes his forehead into Bucky’s chest. Bucky puts his arms around him, and rests his chin on Steve’s head.

“We gotta talk, Stevie-babes,” Bucky says. That’s a new term of endearment, ‘Stevie-babes’. He likes it. From the tenor of Steve’s thoughts, he does too, and Bucky will remember that.

“We don’t gotta,” Steve replies.

“These are new things for us, Steve and we should make sure we talk about them first.”

Steve, still in his arms and very much talking into his chest, says, “Or we could just. Not do that.”

“Sorry sweetheart, but no. We gotta make sure we’re in the same place about these things. Both of them.”

Steve changes tacks, looking up at him finally. “Do you not want to bite me?”

Bucky doesn’t sigh, but he takes the opportunity and kisses Steve, soft and slow and with all the aching tenderness he always feels for Steve. He knows Steve can feel it, just how much he loves him, but he lets it seep into the kiss anyway.

For long minutes, they stand in their kitchen, kissing. Eventually, Bucky eases them out of it. Steve blinks up at him, lips pink and a little swollen, eyes a little glazed.

“Steve,” Bucky says, keeping his voice soft but letting every bit of his conviction bleed into it. “Of course I want to bite you. All the time. I would _live_ off of you if I could.”

Steve blushes. 

“So let’s work through this, OK?”

Steve tucks his head back under Bucky’s chin, snugging close, but he turns his head so he can speak a little easier. “OK. But I’m not changing my mind on this Buck.”

Bucky settles his arms a little tighter around steve. “Which, the biting or the fucking?”

“Either.” 

“Well, who says there’s anything wrong with the sex we’ve been having? It’s good sex, Steve. Right?”

“We need to strengthen the bond.”

“Why? It’s pretty strong.”

Steve shrugs. “Needs to be stronger.”

“Why.”

“I have a feeling.”

Bucky shrugs a little. He believes Steve’s feelings. He always has, ever since they were kids. “OK. So we work on this. Are, um--” 

He doesn't want to go there. It will burst this little bubble they’re in.

Steve sighs when he doesn't finish his thought. “Just ask, Buck.”

“Is this what he did to strengthen your bond?” Bucky cringes a little, just asking. 

Steve shrugs. That means yes.

“That doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways to do this, Stevie. Ways that wouldn’t tie you in knots like this.”

“Pretty sure blood sharing is top of the list,” Steve points out.

Bucky thinks about it for a few minutes. “Well. OK. Let’s work on that. It hasn’t gone great the couple times we’ve tried, but we can try again. Maybe we can work up to it?”

“How do we work up to you biting me?” Steve’s voice and thoughts drip skepticism.

He thinks another minute. “Well, you bite me, for one thing.”

“Um. I’m not a vampire, Buck. And I’m not into bloodplay. That’s a pretty hard no for me.”

“You don’t have to break my skin, Stevie. Try it sometime when we’re making out, though, OK? You already like to nibble, just put a little more teeth into it. You might like it. Leave some marks on me.”

Steve pulls back enough at that to look up at Bucky. “You’d like that, huh?”

“Yes.”

“OK.”

“And I could do the same for you? Well, work up to biting even without breaking the skin, but, but leave some marks. Get you a little more exposed to-- Um.”

Steve smirks a little. “Being sucked on?”

“Or off.” Bucky waggles his eyebrows several times.

“Oh my gods, you nerd,” Steve says, but he’s giggling when he says it.

Bucky has to kiss the laughter off his lips. Has to taste it. After he breaks the kiss, leaves Steve whining a little bit, he continues, “As for the other thing, how about we start with you fucking me? That should work too, right?”

Steve’s brain shorts out. For a few brief golden moments while his magic surges through him, literally lighting him from the inside, his brain is devoid of thought. 

Bucky just smiles. He can wait for Steve to come back on-line before he suggests they get started on that part now.

**Author's Note:**

> [twitter](https://www.twitter.com/BelovedMuerto), or [dreamwidth](https://belovedmuerto.dreamwidth.org), or [tumblr](http://www.belovedmuerto.tumblr.com) i guess.


End file.
